While Apple seems to be doing well in the mobile department with its iPhone and iPad devices, a recent report shows that the tech giant is also seeing some successful sales numbers with its all-in-one iMac desktop.

According to DisplaySearch, a California-based research firm, Apple is ahead of the all-in-one PC game accounting for 32.9 percent of shipments in the third quarter. Lenovo followed with 22.7 percent of all-in-one sales in the third quarter, and Hewlett-Packard (HP) fell in third place with 21.4 percent.

The all-in-one PC market grew 39 percent to 14.5 million units globally last year. According to Chris Connery of DisplaySearch, all-in-ones are an area of the desktop market that will continue growing, and tech companies should focus on them.

DisplaySearch said the all-in-one market could grow to 23.3 million units by 2014.

While Apple's iMac has nearly a third of the all-in-one market, this isn't expected to last long. According to DigiTimes, 2012 will put Lenovo in first place while Apple slides to second. Apple's share is expected to fall to 24 percent with 3.8 million iMac sales while Lenovo is expected to sell 4 million all-in-one units this year.

HP is also looking to do some catching up by releasing some new members to its all-in-one family. For instance, HP will sell the HP Omni all-in-one PC starting January 8. The HP Omni starts at $1,200 and offers a 27-inch screen, Beats Audio technology, HDMI HD TV connection, optional Blu-ray disc drive and more.

According to Cult of Mac, Apple is also looking to revamp its all-in-one iMac this year with a 22-nanometer Ivy Bridge platform.

quote: Only because of Bootcamp. If everyone was still locked away in the OSX walled garden, I think iMac sales would be quite different. And by different I mean lower

Aside from OS X not being a walled garden as you claim, there's also hardware. iMacs have the best displays and fastest internal hardware of any of the AIOs out there. There was a time when Dell sold 24" XPS One to compete with the 24" iMac. Not only was the Dell more expensive, it had a worse MVA display, slower CPU, integrated GPU instead of dedicated, half the RAM, and half the hard drive storage.

It was discontinued once Apple released the 27", now other AIOs don't bother competing on specs and instead try and get as cheap as possible.

So yeah, people also get iMacs for the hardware and OS integration. The only people I know who Boot Camp do it on their Mac laptops. I don't know anyone who Boot Camps an iMac, people who'd do that are way more likely just to have a PC desktop. I don't bother with Boot Camp since I just plug my PC into mine.